At Last, a Solution for the Kitchen

The other night, I started flipping through the October issue of one of my favorite magazines, Better Homes and Gardens, breezing past articles on fall gardens and decorating for Halloween when suddenly — bam! — I stopped.

“Paul!” I said. “Look at this!”

He turned from the TV. “What is it?”

I showed him the photo. “It’s the kitchen of my dreams,” I said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

And it was. The article was part of a special section called “Better by Design,” which showed a kitchen in a bungalow — the magazine referred to it as an “Open-Minded Craftsman” — that had been designed with old-fashioned styling and an open plan.

What I loved about it was its beauty — wood floors, white cabinets and blonde stone countertops. It was also the perfect solution to our layout dilemma: The kitchen was somewhat separate from the great room yet still connected, and the dining room was a real room, but at the same time was connected to the kitchen.

In fact, the layout was exactly the solution to our Plan B. It was smart. It made sense. I could picture it in our house. Even the floor plan was similar: the dining room was at the front of the house, the kitchen was in the middle, the family room was at the back — and there was even a porch behind the family room.

“This is the answer!” I told Paul. “We’ll go with Plan B and do the kitchen something like this — not exactly, because I don’t want a desk or a built-in refrigerator — but this is a great start.”

Paul agreed. I felt good. And so did he, both because I was happy and because I stopped talking to him so he could watch his movie in peace.

Am I correct, peering at this floor plan, thiat if you wanted to walk from the dining room to the family room, the only route is to pass through the breakfast/kitchen area? (Or through the living room, the rest room, the study, and then the office/kitchen/breakfast?) It is hard to see if the O in Office is or is not blocking a doorway drawn in the diagram.

I like that kitchen for a mild amount of cooking, such as for two people. If the kids do show up with their future families, you will have a lot of mess visible from the great room, but I think those will be rare events.

I’m not sure how it would work if you have two people cooking at once. Also, not much cabinet space, but you could put that where the desk is. I hope the center island is big enough to be a working area, as I do not see a lot of counter space elsewhere. I’m assuming there is a dishwasher somewhere.

Funny, one of my kitchens was in that section just last month, a white one, the first one shown.

While I also voted for Plan B, in this picture, the kitchen is very dominating, meaning, it’s all kitchen and then, family room area, not the other way around. That’s the challenge, to determine if the family room will be the “star” of the space or the kitchen.

In my view, the family room should take center stage (not meaning to be in the center.) That kitchen, being white, gives a utilitarian look, again, emphasizing that it is a kitchen, rather than a collection of cabinetry that shows a lower profile in the space. It’s easy, when planning the kitchen, to lose sight of the importance of the other two spaces. Very easy to get sidetracked.

Also, it looks as if there is about 9-10 feet inside the “U”. I think you’ll probably end up with around 6 feet give or take, but that remains to be seen. Planning three spaces inside one space has to be done very carefully.

Nice kitchen and its classic style will suite your house beautifully and not date in the years to come as did Robyn’s (I believe she said it was due for an update and only how many years old?)
Notice the island is at one level unlike the June plan that indicated the eating end to be higher. My post on this, June 27 # 10.

Robyn…I’m not picking on you…you have added ALLOT to this blog. No I don’t have a web site (Another thing to get around to.)…There was an article about me in the business section of our local paper but I couldn’t seem to get it out of the archives. If I do I will forward to you….When I’m back down in the Bahamas for one of my projects…sometime before Christmas, I will take pictures of a house I renovated that is all concrete including interior walls but doesn’t look like a bunker.

I am glad you found a lay-out you like before the final wall studs are put in. However, I am sad that you have to flip through random magazines in order to find the solution when you had to spend money and time with an architect. Frankly, this plan looks similar to a lot of home plans available out there by Frank Betz (a favorite in the South)… I would not, however, block the view as you come in through the front doors otherwise it may look cramped as you enter the house. Long horizontal views should not be sacrificed if possible. A walk-in pantry is a great way to save on cabinetry. But then again, this makes your dining room really quite removed from the rest of the family room and it would definitely make you use it less compared to what the usage will be if you still opt for plan A.

It’s interesting to hear from the previous comment section that it only costs a few hundred dollars to get a mature palm planted. Is this accurate?

I looked into the cost of having a mature tree planted in my yard here in New England, a sugar maple or something, and it was in the thousands. That seemed in line to me, because where I lived before on the west coast I got an arborist’s detailed report on a 70-80 foot uncommon, historic, but not hysterically rare tree I was putting up for city-protected status, and his estimate of replacement cost was $18,000.

However, finding a picture of a kitchen you like is not a solution. It’s a starting point. You can’t just plunk that floorplan into your house– it won’t fit, and moreover it’s not exactly what you want, because that house has a separate living room and you don’t.

So now you know what kind of thing you want, you and your new architect can design a similar kitchen, dining room and living room that works for you.

Here are some issues to think about:

Your entry is different. Where will the doors from the hall be?

You’ve got a side deck next to the pool. Where will the doors to the outside be? If I’m not mistaken, they’re already framed and can’t change.

Do you want the breakfast area (kitchen eating area) to be where it is in the magazine plan? Doesn’t that block both the doors to the outside deck and also the door from hallway to kitchen?

In the magazine design, the entry is carved out of the kitchen/dining room/family room rectangle. In your house, the entry is separate. The magazine picture doesn’t give dimensions, but I’m guessing that the magazine dining area is much shorter than yours would be. In other words, if you adapt that plan in the simplest way you’ll end up with a long narrow dining room. Is that what you want, or would a somewhat different shape be more to your liking?

This is a fine starting point. Now you and your architect have to make some decisions to design *your* kitchen.

The difference between your place and the magazine is that they have both a formal living and dining room, and a family/flop around room adjacent to the kitchen. It seems a bit odd for you to have a formal/separate dining room, when you don’t have a formal living room – your guests will move from the separate dining room to a great room that is contiguous with the kitchen and far more casual.

Alison,
It will be an advantage for you to be able to go into the space and to see how much room there really is.

A number of thoughts:
The advantage of a great room is that it is easy to avoid having many different places to eat thereby gobbling up space that could be used more advantageously. If you have a secluded dining room it means that you will need an informal eating place also. In this tropical area where you anticipate eating outside most of the time, do you really want 2 eating areas plus an island with stools and eating counter?

Another advantage of the great room concept are the long sight lines. A seperate dining room negates that.

I would love to see a new kitchen layout put into the drawings of your house. It is difficult to give feedback if it is necessary to first go back and ascertain the width, length of the first floor and some other layout details.

I hope you run to the architect and then the kitchen designer before you get too far into saying, “this is it”. You do have the advantage of being on a city lot where the views and connection to nature are not as big an issue as in the country (now there is an advantage I would not want for myself!)

I just noticed there are door pulls on the cabinets in the counter facing the great room. Is the idea you have to walk around to get some pots and pans out of that side? I was then going to suggest instead pull out deep drawers on the kitchen side, but I am not sure there is enough space between that counter and the island. Dunno.

Not sure where the pantry fits into this new scheme. Is it gone? If so, you could use the desk area for food storage cabinets.

Another thing– a separate dining room? An entirely separate dining room, with doors?

The old plan had kitchen, dining and living in one room. That gives a casual, fun, beachy, messy, family feel.

This new plan has a separate dining room. That gives a more formal, gracious, neat feel.

Nobody but A&P can say which is right for them, but it’s a big change at this late date. Why the change?

Susan– Good observation that in the magazine design, the kitchen/family room is clearly a kitchen first. Notice that the magazine design *also* has a separate living room on the other side of the hall. In other words, in that house there are three different, separate rooms: a dining room, a living room and a kitchen with a family room area in it.

Alison was looking at this kitchen as a concept & style she liked…She didn’t say she was going to replicate it down to every nut & bolt. Just because the dining room is separate in that plan doesn’t mean she’s going to do that. She (luckily) found a seed that inspired her and gave her direction. Nothing wrong with that. She liked the kitchen style and I’m sure she will adapt it to suit herself and her family. This is a beach house…not a formal home…..And I don’t want to hear references to McMansion again.

Please Trudy…What a stupid comment…Maybe they are fake for style or maybe they are for storing Scrabble, Monopoly games. That’s not her kitchen. Who cares… We aren’t here to tell A. & P. what to put in their cupboards.

I just want to clarify one thing. I can’t see how the pantry/powder room would fit in A&P’s floor plan. I’ve assumed it’s not a factor in the plan in my first comments.

On another note, I definitely see lots of value to dining at a window area, where people enjoy gazing and lingering, among other activities that take place at a table. I believe that is worth the potential awkwardness of having the kitchen in the center. I’d just keep the kitchen more low key, but I love the table near the windows.

The magazine picture shows us a generous family room and a big kitchen with a breakfast nook. Then there’s also a pantry, a bathroom and a dining room.

The magazine doesn’t give dimensions, but one can easily figure them out based on the size of the stove and the doors. A rough guess is that the kitchen/family room/dining room area is 60′ x 24′, including the hall. The kitchen/family room is about 30’x24′, and the dining room plus the pantry and bathroom is about 30′ x 18′.

In other words, the magazine plan is a whole lot bigger than the space A&P need to fill. It’s about 50% bigger.

Regarding floor plans – on the blog’s home page, there is a section on the right with “tags” (key words). Click on “floor plans”, and that will take you to the post(s) with floor plans.

I can’t say I agree with your assessment, Alison:

“It was also the perfect solution to our layout dilemma: The kitchen was somewhat separate from the great room yet still connected, and the dining room was a real room, but at the same time was connected to the kitchen.” To me it looks just the opposite. The kitchen and great room are not at all distinct, and the dining room is separated from the kitchen by a pantry and a long-ish hall. It is very pretty, though.

There’s no place for informal, family meals or snacks with this plan, though. But maybe the screen porch could be that place. In that case you might want a trolley to wheel the food and dishes back and forth to the kitchen. As far as dishes and mess showing – that wouldn’t bother me, personally.

Wendy_1 – To get to the floor plans easily, just click on the word “floor plans” in the Popular Tags box up on the right. That will pull up all the posts having to do with the floor plans, and the post with the “final” plans will be just a few down.

Fang, I don’t think they need a living room and a family room, just to do the right thing with the family room. No impression they have any need for somethng formal here, I think the formal dining room is for when the kids are all there for Christmas, etc.

I guess A fell for that kitchen, as I did (like light kitchens with a kind of old fashioned look), and not having really a clue what her previously planned kitchen would look like, remember, no mockups, apparently, just formless plans that have never solidified, fell on this as a solution. Now the problem is, how to it it into the house with appropriate modifications.

By the way, those stools at the counter would seem to interfere with traffic from the dining room thru the kitchen. I have never understood counter stools, they would kill my back. In my house, people who eat in the kitchen eat over the sink :-) That does leave the question, where is the informal eating area, and can the dining room serve both purposes.

This notion that a kitchen must be at the center of everything has jumped the shark for me and many folks I know. The sound of the faucet and a sink full of dishes, the sights and smells of aftermath and wreckage long after dinner’s over, I mean, come on, it’s like explicitly tight jeans in the 70s, we’ve seen it, now put that thing away and let’s all look at something else for a while.

Sure, we’re no longer in an era where domestic help does the cooking in a kitchen walled off from the dining room, but to have the kitchen in the lap of the living room is not – not – not comfortable. It’s a studio apartment. How about a little mystery? Or at least a comfortable distance?

Remember when a kitchen was where one furtively stole a kiss, or shared happy news before everyone else knew, or escaped the others to discuss something *privately*? How can a guy dodge dishwashing duty in the living room if he is at point-blank range of The Look from the kitchen?

Gimmee at least some Rob and Laura Petrie-style shutters that one can slam open and closed like a navy signalman.

If you have an island, I highly recommend having an electrical outlet installed on one of the sides. It’s extremely handy. I use mine all the time and my friends who have islands without an outlet really wish they had one.

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They've found an idyllic tiny town in Florida, they've bought a piece of land and now Paul B. Brown and Alison Davis are setting out to build their dream house. How hard can it be, they wonder, even though they live 1,500 miles away, they've never built a home before and they don't know anything about architects, builders, local zoning laws or financing? On this blog for Great Homes, they recount their successes and failures and will chronicle their adventures to come.